In 1820 Percy Shelley writes in the concluding lines to his poem, Ode to the West Wind, “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”
As I write, I am in the town of Swarthmore, just outside Philadelphia, PA. where there are huge piles of snow everywhere; it’s the most ever recorded, and spring, and any sign of a green world, seem only something the imagination can entertain.
But the ‘green world’ is always there, only awaiting our attention, as those who have seen the film Avatar where the indigenous inhabitants of the planet Pandora, the Na’vi, take nature directly into their bodies, will know. The 17th century metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell ran the theme of a ‘green world’ through his poems, a good example being The Garden in which the last couplet has become a standard garden sundial inscription: “How could such sweet and wholesome hours be reckoned but with herbs and flowers.”
Metaphorically for Marvell, the ‘green world’ exists as an imaginary place, a provisional sanctuary for renewal, for creation and for escape from a bleak, unforgiving world.
Canadian literary scholar Northrop Frye makes extensive use of the notion of a ‘green world’ in his Shakespearean criticism. The basic plot or “drama of the green world,” as Frye calls it, is “the ritual theme of the triumph of life and love over the waste land.” Hence, Frye perceives a common element in Shakespeare’s comedies and late romances – The Two Gentlemen of Verona, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, The Merry Wives of Windsor – of a ‘green world,’ a moon-lit dream world of the forest where magical transformations take place. The daily world of reality and convention is supplanted for a brief period, by a ‘green world’ of nature, imagination, magic, music, and art; it’s a place of renewal, reconciliation and healing like Marvell’s garden, where for Frye “art and nature are one.” Since every society seems beset with discord what happens in the crucible of the ‘green world’ is the “concord of the discord,” as in the final act of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
It might seem moving from literary ruminations to the materiality of green roofs itself requires an imaginative leap. However, having visited a number of green roofs this past year I can bear witness the experience is not unlike that of being one of the characters in a Shakespearean forest. Every time I descended from a green roof the day seemed brighter, more hopeful, the world a place for butterflies not cars.
Green roofs offer one major inroad in transforming our global cities from unhealthy, stressful, overheated environments to spaces that are simply more livable. The ecological movement for green roofs – roof’s being our most ignored urban space, is a prominent feature in the emergence of a restorative ‘living architecture’ that integrates, without disruption, inorganic and lifeless building components with living, breathing organically alive recuperative ingredients. With this perspective we can begin to replace our view of buildings as nothing more than brute materiality with an outlook that sees buildings themselves as alive and organic.
From the vantage point of buildings as organisms the heavily freighted word sustainability extends its meanings. For sustainability is more than efficient technologies and instrumental techniques; it is fundamentally about sustaining life – the fostering of widespread practices where all living things, forests, neighbourhoods, people, buildings, watersheds, mushrooms, microbes and butterflies play a vital part in a complex web of interrelationships that affirm the sustainability of each over a vast span of time. Jonathon Porritt, former director of Friends of the Earth and Chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, captures the idea beautifully: “If something is sustainable, it means we can go on doing it indefinitely. If it isn’t, we can’t.”
Green roofs or as they are often now called ‘living roofs,’ are simply those where vegetation of various kinds, depending on the climate and the kind of green roof desired, grows. The most common planting for extensive (covering almost the entire roof) green roofs, as opposed to green roof gardens, is different varieties of sedums often mixed with herbs, some flowering plants, and grasses. Sedums, which come in hundreds of varieties, are succulents (water retaining), hardy fleshy leafed perennials – members of the same family as well known jade plants.
Last November, Western Engineering’s very congenial facilities manager, Mike Gaylard, took me on a tour of the just-opened Claudette MacKay-Lassonde Pavilion, Western’s green building and soon to be the first, of many we hope, LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified buildings on the campus. And yes, it has a green roof with a variety of sedum plantings, as well as a small windmill and solar panels. Sedums have wonderful common names: gold-moss stonecrop, fuldaglut two-row-stonecrop, watch-chain or tasteless stonecrop….. all with very high drought tolerance. There are also a number of non-sedum species which are often used to add colour such as yellow ice plant with brilliant yellow flowers, and fame flower or round leaf rock flower with beautiful purple flowers.
The advantages are many: aesthetics – instead of conventional dreary roofscapes of asphaltic tar, the visual impact is restorative; as well, many butterflies, birds and insects are attracted to green roofs; storm water management – during and following heavy rains green roofs absorb significant quantities of rainfall and storm water runoff; Western’s green roof collects rainwater in a 10,000-litre cistern that is filtered and used for the building’s toilets; mitigation of the urban heat island – cities with their vast dark-coloured pavements and concrete absorb large amounts of heat during the day and release it slowly at night contributing to the often unpleasant warming of our urban spaces.
The heat island effect contributes to smog formation, air pollution and greater energy consumption. Green roofs with their evaporation and plant transpiration release water and cool the ambient temperature of the building. Enough green roofs would go a long way to mitigating the urban heat island effect; acoustical and heat insulation (green roofs, reduce the sound from traffic, and airplanes and reduce substantially the cost of air-conditioning and heating costs;) reduction in carbon dioxide – as the earth warms up – we are well aware that carbon dioxide is the main heat–trapping gas associated with increased temperatures.
Green roofs can play a major role in directly reducing carbon dioxide by taking it out of the air and releasing oxygen and indirectly by reducing ambient temperatures so that there is a sizeable reduction in the use of fossil fuels for heating and cooling; economic benefits – green roofs extend the life of a roof by two to three times by reducing temperature fluctuations and providing UV protection. Researchers at Toronto’s Ryerson University found that with only eight% green roof coverage the city could save over $300 million per year from increased energy efficiency and improved storm water management. Green roofs, such as the one at Western, can also offer wonderful opportunities to educate the public on environmental issues.
Healing and restorative green worlds are possible right in our cities and a cause for spring celebration. How about an early April, end of term vegetation ceremony around Western’s green building? We could, among other things, read Andrew Marvell’s poem The Garden with its inspiring lines, “annihilating all that’s made to a green thought in a green shade.” If anyone is interested let me know: airving3@uwo.ca
The writer is a social work professor at King’s University College and a regular contributor to Western News on environmental issues.